Rational Agency and the Birth of the Human:

2021 ◽  
pp. 116-142
Keyword(s):  
Rational Agency

Parentheticalism and (Ir)rational Agency

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Henning
Keyword(s):  
Mental States ◽  
Rational Agency ◽  
Willingness To Use

This chapter considers various cases of irrationality (such as akrasia, weakness in executive commitments, doxastic incontinence, etc.), all of which involve a break between an agent’s considered judgment and her effective mental states. It is shown that parentheticalism can solve puzzles that these phenomena typically raise. The discussion leads into a deeper grasp of the rationale behind parenthetical and non-parenthetical uses of verbs like “believe” and “want”: They are associated with aspects of rational agency that normally coincide but can come apart. In the latter cases, our willingness to use verbs like “believe” and “want” is conflicted in a way that confirms parentheticalism. Finally, I suggest that parentheticalism can help us understand the role of the agent in rational agency and solve the Missing Agent Problem.

Towards a Trajectory-Dependent Model of (Human) Rational Agency

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Jones
Keyword(s):  
Regulatory Role ◽  
Rational Agency ◽  
Dependent Model ◽  
Reliable Path

This chapter addresses the question, “What is the role and authority of conscious deliberation and judgment in human rational agency?” Anti-rationalists claim that the rationalist account of its role and authority is mistaken: conscious deliberation and judgment plays a relatively small part in our practical lives, can be used in the service of rationalizing bullshit, and is not the only or necessarily the most reliable path of access to our reasons. Against the anti-rationalist, the chapter argues that their critique rests on an analogy between the authority of judgment and the authority of an expert, when the rationalist models judgment’s authority on that of a judge. Against the traditional rationalist, the chapter argues the judge model fails. The chapter explores a third model—the monitor model—which, like rationalism, gives our reflective capacities a significant regulatory role, but accommodates the anti-rationalist emphasis on emotion and fast non-deliberative action.

scholarly journals Rationally Agential Pleasure? A Kantian Proposal

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keren Gorodeisky
Keyword(s):  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Rational Agency ◽  
Cognitive States ◽  
Aesthetic Pleasure ◽  
History Of

This chapter argues that, on Kant’s account, aesthetic pleasure is an exercise of rational agency insofar as, when proper, (1) it involves consciousness of its ground (the reasons for having it) and thus of itself as properly responsive to its object, and (2) actually feeling this pleasure involves its endorsement as an attitude to have. I claim that seeing this clearly requires that we divest ourselves of the following dilemma: either pleasures are the noncognitive, passive ways through which we are affected by objects or they are cognitive states by virtue of the theoretical beliefs or practical desires they involve. On my reading of Kant, this dilemma is false. Aesthetic pleasure is neither passive, nor theoretically or practically cognitive, and yet, it is an exercise of rational agency by virtue of belonging to a domain of rationality that is largely overlooked in the history of philosophy: aesthetic rationality.

The End of Rational Agency

2021 ◽  
pp. 35-63
Author(s):  
Gal Yehezkel
Keyword(s):  
Rational Agency

Kant and Some Critics

2020 ◽  
pp. 188-213
Author(s):  
Terence Irwin
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Categorical Imperative ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
Mutual Respect ◽  
Rational Agency ◽  
Rational Agents ◽  
Moral Rightness ◽  
Moral Principles ◽  
Universal Law

Kant argues that an understanding of the relation between morality and rational agency reveals the nature of moral rightness. Moral principles give us reasons for acting apart from our feeling or preferences. They give us reasons that apply to all rational agents alike. Principles that embody such reasons conform to a categorical imperative that states a universal law for all rational agents. Against critics who contend that this universal law is too general to tell us anything useful about right and wrong, Kant argues that it requires us to treat rational agents as ends in themselves, not to be sacrificed simply for the sake of other people’s goals. This attitude of mutual respect among rational agents is the basis for a moral and social order that realizes human freedom.

Normativity and the Will

2004 ◽  
Vol 55 ◽  
pp. 195-216
Author(s):  
R. Jay Wallace
Keyword(s):  
Human Agency ◽  
Rational Agency ◽  
The Will

If there is room for a substantial conception of the will in contemporary theorizing about human agency, it is most likely to be found in the vicinity of the phenomenon of normativity. Rational agency is distinctively responsive to the agent's acknowledgment of reasons, in the basic sense of considerations that speak for and against the alternatives for action that are available. Furthermore, it is natural to suppose that this kind of responsiveness to reasons is possible only for creatures who possess certain unusual volitional powers, beyond the bare susceptibility to beliefs and desires necessary for the kind of rudimentary agency of which the higher animals are arguably capable.

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